For those of you who missed the headlines, national officers of the Delta Zeta sorority came to DePauw University in Indiana last fall to deal with the local chapter's dwindling membership.
As proof that being Greek doesn't entail being bright, they solved the issue by purging 23 of the 35 active members because they were insufficiently dedicated to recruitment of new members.
In an amazing statistical coincidence, the evicted housemates included all the overweight girls and three of four racial minorities. The 12 remaining members, according to the New York Times, are ""slender and popular with fraternity men.""
The university president expelled the sorority from campus, demonstrating that there is occasionally justice in the world.
The controversy over Delta Zeta demonstrates what I see as the three fundamental principles of Greek life on college campuses.
Maybe it goes without saying that superficiality is the bedrock of the Greek lifestyle. Over the last century, fraternities and sororities have been bastions of unenlightened opinion when it comes to admitting people of color or anyone else who doesn't fit their narrow image-based entry qualifications.
Elizabeth Haneline, a stocky computer-science major of Asian heritage and one of the evictees, said, ""The Greek system hasn't changed at all, but instead of racism, it's image now.""
Who decides what the image is? Apparently, the Delta Zeta elite felt that girls who studied hard, didn't party much, and were of varying body types did not fit the image of a prototypical sorority girl.
In one shocking revelation, the national organization bussed in a group of women from out of town to talk to freshmen recruits at DePauw while some local members were told to stay upstairs and not to show themselves at the recruiting session.
The sorority complained that the media unfairly vilified them and neglected to present their side of the story. Interestingly, they also refused to talk to the media about the issue.
Evading the press is not a new tactic for the Greek community, as national sorority groups gave the run-around several years ago to journalist Alexandra Robbins and forbade their members from talking to her, forcing her to go undercover posing as a pledge. It seems the inner workings of sororities aren't partial to the bright light of public scrutiny.
This leads into the second pillar of Greek life, which is exclusivity. If these groups truly existed to do community service and to raise money for pet causes, they would accept anyone who wanted to join. It's simple mathematics: more members equals more service to the community.
But this isn't about philanthropy. It's about power: power of certain students to include or exclude other students who may be their equal in every way except that one student is a member and another is not.
The inclusion and exclusion of people from organizations based on superficial characteristics has a long, unfortunate historical precedent in this country. I'm no psychologist, but it seems to me that this kind of power can't be healthy, especially for people no more than four years removed from the world of ""Mean Girls.""
Delta Zeta is now suing the university to get the purged group reinstated, thus demonstrating the third pillar of Greek life: self-perpetuation as an end unto itself.
If these people had any common sense, they would realize that the national scandal has irreparably damaged their brand name. From now on, whenever anyone thinks of Delta Zeta, they will think of small-minded meanness and bigotry. If the remaining members of the group at DePauw want to continue to spend time together, they should reconstitute themselves under a new name or—God forbid—drop the silly rituals and just be roommates.
In coming down hard on Delta Zeta, DePauw sent a clear message that superficiality, exclusivity and self-perpetuation are incompatible with a quality campus environment. Fraternities and sororities at UW-Madison that possess similarly shallow tendencies should observe the fate of Delta Zeta and consider themselves warned.
